The economics of literary translation: Some theory and evidence

Books are an important factor of cultural transmission, but often need to be translated to achieve this goal. English is sometimes accused of dominating in terms of translations. We develop a theoretical model, which is estimated using UNESCO translation data. We show that if account is taken of factors such as production in the source and the destination languages, as well as distances between cultures, then translations from English are surpassed in relative terms by translations from other idioms, including Scandinavian languages and French; their position as destination of literary translations is however fairly weak.

► The paper challenges the common view that English dominates in translations of fiction. ► It examines the claim that too much is translated from, but too little to English. ► It builds a theoretical model to address the question of translation patterns. ► It shows that translations are driven by the sizes of populations and proximities between languages. ► It uses UNESCO data to support the theoretical model.